Though there were concerns that Mexico might skew hard to the left due to Lopez Obrador's nationalist and populist rhetoric, two of the president-elect's early security picks are decidedly mainstream. One selection is Olga Sanchez Cordero, Lopez Obrador's candidate for secretary of the interior. President Ernesto Zedillo initially appointed Sanchez Cordero to Mexico's high court, the National Supreme Court of Justice, where she served two terms from 1995 to 2015.
Another significant pick is Alfonso Durazo, who worked in the administrations of both Fox and Carlos Salinas. Durazo has been tapped to lead the Secretariat of Public Security, which was a Cabinet-level organization created under the Fox administration in 2000. The agency was dissolved under the Pena Nieto administration in 2013, and its functions were folded into the Interior Ministry in the form of the National Security Commission. The commission now oversees the federal police, the federal protection service and the federal prison system. Lopez Obrador also plans to restore the public security ministry to a Cabinet-level agency.
On the campaign trail, Lopez Obrador vaguely discussed the possibility of somehow working a deal with cartel leaders to reduce violence. He also ambiguously talked about offering amnesty for narcotics crimes, producing a great deal of controversy. However, since the election, the details of the proposed amnesty have begun emerging, allaying the fears of many.
At a July 7 news conference, Durazo and Sanchez Cordero said women and children coerced into working for criminal organizations or farmers forced to grow illegal drugs would be the primary beneficiaries of pardons. Those involved in violent crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking and sexual assault would not be eligible. Sanchez Cordero also said some repentant drug traffickers might receive amnesty if they help solve serious crimes and locate the bodies of victims.
This definition of amnesty is clearly not a blanket that will apply to all cartel figures. In fact, most Mexican cartel groups and street gangs are involved in violent crime against people – it would be hard to find a Mexican criminal group that has not been part of the brutality wracking the country. Therefore, the number of criminals who would qualify for the amnesty will be quite limited – if any are even interested in applying for it to begin with (or think they would survive the process).
Hot wars among Mexico's cartel groups are feeding the country's record number of homicides. The carnage can be found in border towns such as Tijuana, Juarez and Reynosa; in drug production areas such as Guerrero state; at retail drug sales points such as Mexico City and Cancun; and at hot spots for petroleum theft such as Guanajuato. It will clearly take more than an offer of amnesty to people involved in nonviolent crime to solve this array of problems – especially given the lucrative nature of these illegal acts. It appears that the amnesty proposal was just a campaign promise that is now being given lip service, rather than a broad program to help criminals return to civil society.
Sanchez Cordero has also stated that with marijuana now legal or decriminalized in Canada and several U.S. states, it doesn't make much sense for Mexico to continue to spend so much time and resources prosecuting cannabis cases and eradicating such crops. At the same time, the Lopez Obrador administration will consider decriminalizing the recreational use of marijuana in Mexico, she said. While such a move would certainly cause angst for the U.S. federal government, it would be difficult for the United States to place too much pressure on Mexico since it would follow decriminalization measures by Canada and several U.S. states.

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced Aug. 14 that the country would undergo a 15-day consultation process over ways to protect its steel industry, Bloomberg reported.
More at: https://worldview.stratfor.com/situation-report/canada-government-considering-safeguards-steel-industry

Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com have launched a campaign for restrictions on data sharing between hospitals to be dropped. At the Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference in Washington, D.C., the companies issued a joint statement against patient data sharing restrictions.
“We are jointly committed to removing barriers for the adoption of technologies for healthcare interoperability, particularly those that are enabled through the cloud and AI,” the companies declared. “We share the common quest to unlock the potential in healthcare data, to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.”
According to CNBC, the companies even proposed building tools “for the health community around a set of common standards for exchanging health information electronically.”
More at: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/14/alphabet-amazon-ibm-and-microsoft-want-hospitals-data/

Chris Cuomo announced Monday night that CNN will not condemn but instead justify political violence against anyone it defines as “bigots” — which, according to the network’s editorial tone over the past two years, signals open season on all Trump supporters for violent activists like Antifa and the Black Bloc. To legitimize political violence, Cuomo said, “All punches are not equal morally… Drawing a moral equivalency between those espousing hate and those fighting it, because they both resort to violence emboldens hate, legitimized hateful belief and elevates what should be stamped out.”
This is a dramatic turning point for the far left. Not only is CNN offering moral cover for those who engage in political violence, but — thanks to the ever-widening definition of “hate” — CNN is also calling for the left’s political opponents to be “stamped out.”
This, of course, is anathema to the very heart of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement, which was never about “stamping out” anything. Rather, it was about using peaceful protest and civil disobedience to change hearts and minds.
Cuomo continued:
Two wrongs and what is right. The bigots are wrong to hit. Antifa or whomever — anarchists or malcontents or the misguided — they are also wrong to hit. But fighting hate is right. And in a clash between hate and those who oppose it, those who oppose it are on the side of right.
After using the language of “stamped out,” CNN also crusades for “fighting hate,” but not within the context of King — where unassailable decency is used to change public opinion, to pursue a moral awakening. CNN is talking about physical “fighting.”
Cuomo and CNN go even further:
Think about it: civil rights activists, were they the same morally as the bigots and the racists with whom they exchanged blows? Are people who go to war against an evil regime on the same moral ground as those they seek to stop from oppressing the weak? When you punch me in the nose for being Italian and say I’m somehow less than, am I in the same moral place when I punch you back for saying that.
It’s not about being right in the eyes of the law, but you also have to know what’s right and wrong in a moral, in a good and evil sense.
That’s why people who show up to fight against bigots are not to be judged the same as the bigots, even if they do resort to the same kinds of petty violence.

More than half of the annual inflow of foreign refugees arriving in the United States are on food stamps, a government report reveals. Since 2008, as Breitbart News reported, the U.S. has permanently resettled more than 1.7 million foreign nationals and refugees through a variety of humanitarian programs like the Special Immigrant Juveniles and the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. This is a foreign population larger than Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — a city with more than 1.5 million residents.
An annual report by the Office of Refugee Resettlement was analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Jason Richwine, in which the analyst revealed that about 56 percent of households headed by foreign refugees who arrived in the U.S. between 2011 and 2015 are using taxpayer-funded food stamps.
Nearly 30 percent of refugees received cash welfare of some sort, while 34 percent of refugees 18-years-old or older said they had no health insurance. Of the refugees who said they did have health insurance, about 50 percent said they were either on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance, both of which are taxpayer-funded.
Study: Welfare for Foreign Refugees Costs U.S. Taxpayers $870M Annuallyhttps://t.co/3HKVGc0nNR
— John Binder 👽 (@JxhnBinder) February 9, 2018
The education levels of foreign refugees coming to the U.S. are also remarkably low. Roughly half of refugees 25-years or older said they did not have a high school diploma before arriving in the U.S.
Additionally, only 16 percent of refugees 18-years or older said they were currently seeking some kind of degree. The most common degree sought by refugees is a high school diploma.
As Breitbart News‘ Michael Patrick Leahy noted most recently, President Trump’s administration has historically reduced the annual inflow of foreign refugees. Under Trump’s “America First” agenda, the U.S. is on pace to accept less than 23,000 refugees for the Fiscal Year 2018. This would be the lowest yearly refugee admission in three decades.
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/13/more-than-half-of-foreign-refugees-are-on-taxpayer-funded-food-stamps/

The West Virginia House of Delegates has impeached all four of the state's Supreme Court justices.
The Republican-led House on Monday night impeached Justice Beth Walker and the other justices for abusing their authority. The article says they failed to control office expenses and not maintaining policies over important matters such as working lunches, the use of state vehicles and office computers at home.
Walker was the last of the four justices to be impeached. She had avoided impeachment earlier when the House voted not to pass an article against her for $131,000 in renovations she made after taking office last year.
Suspended Justice Allen Loughry, Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Justice Robin Davis also were impeached.
Loughry was suspended earlier this year and has pleaded not guilty to a 23-count federal indictment.
More at: https://www.wowktv.com/news/west-virginia/west-virginia-house-considers-impeaching-supreme-court/1365301088

President Donald Trump "has a great deal of frustration," with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a briefing Tuesday, calling again on the Turkish "executive president" to release pastor Brunson and other U.S. citizens as the diplomatic standoff between the two nations continued to weigh on global markets.
"We’re going to continue to call on Turkey to do the right thing and release those individuals," including pastor Andrew Brunson, Sanders said.
The statement came shortly after a White House official said that the United States warned more economic pressures may be in store for Turkey if it refuses to release the jailed American pastor. The message emerged a day after White House national security adviser John Bolton met privately with Turkish ambassador Serdar Kilic about the case of evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson. Bolton warned him that the United States would not give any ground, a senior U.S. official said.
The White House official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said "nothing has progressed" thus far on the Brunson case.
"The administration is going to stay extremely firm on this. The president is 100 percent committed to bringing Pastor Brunson home and if we do not see actions in the next few days or a week there could be further actions taken," the official said.
Further actions would likely take the form of economic sanctions, the official said, who added: The pressure is going to keep up if we're not seeing results.
Trump doubled tariffs on imports of Turkish steel and aluminum last week, contributing to a precipitous fall in the lira which has lost a quarter of its value this month. The United States is also considering a fine against Turkeys state-owned Halkbank for allegedly helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Earlier this month, the United States imposed sanctions on two top officials in President Recep Tayyip Erdogans cabinet in an attempt to get Turkey to turn over Brunson.
In response, on Tuesday Erdogan vowed to boycott American electronics, including iPhones, in a defiance of Trump’s demands. And while even a widespread Turkish boycott would do little to dent U.S. economic interests, it shows Erdogan is refusing to give in to market turmoil that’s pushed borrowing costs to record highs and threatens to descend the nation into a financial crisis.
More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-14/trump-has-great-deal-frustration-erdogan

Investigative Journalist Jen Moore was found dead in a suburban Washington D.C. hotel room Monday, according to police and shocked and distraught friends and colleagues.
Moore died of an apparent seizure. Police are closely investigating the cause of death after former FBI Agent Robyn Gritz, a friend of Moore’s, made inquiries with homicide detectives Monday afternoon in Prince Georges County, Maryland. Preliminary reports from police said the death was not the result of suicide.
Moore’s body was found by employees at the Country Inn & Suites by Radisson, Washington, D.C. East – in Capitol Heights, Maryland. The investigation is ongoing. An autopsy had not been scheduled as of late Monday.
Moore, an advocate who investigated abused and trafficked children, had been in the process of investigating allegations by a 26-year-old man that — as a young boy — he was sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and pimped out at private sex parties attended by other D.C. elites.
In fact, just four weeks before her death, Moore filed details of the alleged victim’s claims with the Department of Homeland Security, detailing the allegations against Clinton. Moore contacted Homeland Security beginning on July 6th through July 9th, records show. A week later, she contacted the FBI with identical details about the victim and the shocking allegations against Clinton.
FBI sources report no case has been opened on the evidence supplied by Moore. Homeland Security officials could not be reached for comment.
Moore had approached True Pundit’s Thomas Paine in June with the allegations against Clinton. Paine conducted a series of face-to-face interviews with Moore and the alleged victim in various locales. By July, the victim agreed to tell his story to Paine. But Moore and the traumatized victim wanted to contact Homeland Security and the FBI first to see if they would open a criminal case against Clinton prior to publicizing the claims.

A crowdfunding campaign has succeeded in raising the funds necessary to pay a Freedom of Information Act request fee for documents related to the CIA’s controversial MKUltra program.
John Greenewald of Black Vault, a website that publishes government documents, appealed to the internet for help after the agency refused to waive the $425 fee it was demanding to release the documents. Greenewald, who has been filing FOIA requests for two decades, had previously published files on MKUltra, a program best known for dosing individuals with drugs like LSD to research mind control.
More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-14/internet-just-crowdfunded-release-4358-cia-mind-control-documents

Having seemingly distracted the world, briefly, from being caught 'shadowbanning' conservatives (or should we say "using quality filters"), by outright-banning other right-leaning individuals (Alex Jones and Peter van Buren forever; and Candace Owen and Ron Paul Institute's Daniel McAdams temporarily), it appears Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey has a cunning plan for purging the rest of the world's naysayers from his platform.
It's simple - according to the latest tweet from @TwitterSafety - Twitter will suspend you for trying not to be suspended...
This week, we are suspending accounts for attempting to evade an account suspension. These accounts were previously suspended for abusive behavior or evading a previous suspension, and are not allowed to continue using Twitter.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) August 14, 2018 Which sounds like a dragnet or one-strike rule.
And rather than be careful in its suspension, it is relying on you to claim back your account status should you feel aggrieved...
We will continue this work in the coming weeks as we identify others who are attempting to Tweet following an account suspension. If you believe your account has been suspended in error, please let us know.https://t.co/RUWvNoQt2G
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) August 14, 2018

A New Mexico judge on Monday agreed to release five suspects arrested on child abuse charges at a New Mexico camp, against the wishes of both the sheriff's department and the FBI, which described the group as "heavily armed and considered extremist(s) of the Muslim belief."
Judge Sarah Backus ordered the suspects - Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40, Lucas Morton, 40, Jany Leveille, 35, Hujrah Wahhaj, 37, and Subhannah Wahhaj, 35 - released on $20,000 bond each Monday evening, reports the Taos County Sheriff's Office. They will be required to wear ankle monitors and maintain weekly contact with their attorneys, and were ordered to cooperate with the New Mexico Children Youth and Families division (CYFD) where the eleven children the sheriff says were being trained to commit school shootings, are being held in protective custody.
Despite authorities finding a dead child's remains on the compound, and an alleged letter sent from one suspect to his brother inviting him to come to New Mexico and die as a martyr, Judge Backus ruled that the state failed to meet the burden of showing the suspects were a danger to the community after several hours of testimony.
We're sure Judge Backus's ruling has nothing to do with the fact that the training camp's ringleader, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, is the son of a famous New York Imam, Siraj Wahhaj - an alleged unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing, who testified as a character witness for the notorious "blind sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman - who was convicted in 1995 of plotting the attack, according to CBS News. The senior Wahhaj was also described by Women's March founder and liberal Islamic activist Linda Sarsour as a "mentor," and an "amazing man."
More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-14/new-mexico-judge-releases-jihadi-terrorist-camp-suspects-despite-pleas-sheriff-fbi

In its latest ‘resource nationalization’ push, Indonesia’s government is drafting a new regulation that will require all oil contractors to sell their crude oil production to state-held energy firm Pertamina.
Indonesia will publish the change in regulation “as soon as possible,” Reuters quoted energy ministry spokesman Agung Pribadi as saying on Tuesday. The move will be aimed at supporting the weakening local currency, the rupiah, and at cutting crude oil import requirements for the state oil company Pertamina, according to the ministry’s spokesman.
Chevron, ExxonMobil, and other oil contractors currently working in Indonesia, at present have production sharing deals under which they split the production with the government and are allowed to export their shares.
More at: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Indonesia-Wants-All-Contractors-To-Sell-Their-Oil-To-State-Firm-Pertamina.html

Lorna Harries, Associate Professor in Molecular Genetics and Matt Whiteman, Professor of Experimental Therapeutics, both at University of Exeter, write for the Conversation: “In our new work, we showed that by treating old cells with a chemical that releases small amounts of hydrogen sulphide, we were able to increase levels of some splicing factors, and to rejuvenate old human cells.
“Hydrogen sulphide is a molecule that is found naturally in our bodies and has been shown to improve several features of age-related disease in animals.
“But it can be toxic in large amounts, so we needed to find a way to deliver it directly to the part of the cell where it is needed.
“By using a ‘molecular postcode’ we have been able to deliver the molecule directly to the mitochondria, the structures that produce energy in cells, where we think it acts, allowing us to use tiny doses, which are less likely to cause side effects.”
More at: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1002867/science-news-Ageing-process-REVERSED-human-cells-University-of-Exeter

You already are a useful idiot with one foot over the line to fellow traveler, at the current rate you will be a full fledged commie in no time with out my help, I know I am right about communist/socialist hellholes not only because of the facts but because of your insipid propaganda in support of them, Libya was a hellhole before NATO pushed it off the cliff into anarchy, most hellholes do hover right at the edge of the cliff for a long time before collapsing on their own but that doesn't make them well run or a good place to live.

War guilt is not an excuse for destroying your own citizens, those directly responsible for the war participation you discuss are also those who seek to profit by flooding their own countries with barbarians.
And many of the "refugees" are nothing more than economic migrants from countries unaffected by wars.

Seasoned weather watcher James Reynolds of Earth Uncut TV was on hand at the active Anak Krakatau volcano in Indonesia on August 12, where he recorded some impressive aerial video.
Reynolds reported “multiple explosions” like the one seen in this video, throughout his visit to the area. “Some of those lava bombs were size of trucks,” he wrote on Twitter.
Video at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/lava-bombs-size-trucks-aerial-131737083.html